Asana tasks provide an excellent central record of developments during the course of completing a task. Sometimes we use the comments section to take meeting notes, sharing them on a display so everyone can see what is being done. Problem: the comments box is pretty small for this, you can only see a few lines at a time.
We tried the “full screen” mode, but the comments box is no bigger there. It does keep the focus on the task though, which is important. Could that comment box be made larger?
John, I feel you. We’ve used both comments and the Description field to record notes about each agenda item. Not ideal, IMO, for the following reasons. See my proposed “Project Notes” feature below.
Description. Though changes to the task description are tracked (access previous versions in the Activity stream), the Description field is not as powerful as a collaborative whiteboard/notepad.
Comments. To me, comments aren’t good for taking notes. They are great for people adding their own comments to a particular topic, but even that can detract from the attempt at an effective, concise, efficient meeting, since attendees typing their own comments during a meeting can be distracting and is akin to sideline conversations (plus, not all comments are worth recording 
).
Another Not-So-Good Option - Conversations. I realize Asana has a Conversations tab, but it is like comments w/ replies, so it’s not good for taking notes.
My Proposed Solution
Therefore, I propose a Project Notes feature. It would be, as the name suggests, at the project level. It could be viewed and edited either:
The ability to have it as a slide-out column on the “List” or “Board” tab would allow us to follow a meeting agenda and take notes at the same time. This would be a very powerful feature! Here’s a screenshot of what I visualize:
Any thoughts?
I do like the idea Joe, just was going for something easy to implement initially. 
We tried conversations, and it is tough engaging people in them if they don’t operate completely out of Asana (instead of relaying email prompts).
If the notes were editable (as opposed to logged and unchangeable) they could become a good collaboration space too.
Yes, my proposal would be a major feature. If you don’t need collaborative notes, you could simply use your favorite app that works for you (Evernote, OneNote, Google Docs, Word, Pages, Bear app, etc.). If you need collaboration, you could still use Google Docs and others that allow collaboration. It just wouldn’t be as streamlined as my proposal.
For the time being, James’ suggestion looks like a good one ➞ Feature Request : Add UI to show note taking during a meeting - #4 by James_Carl
Thanks @John_Taylor for writing in and thanks @Joe_Thomas for that awesome mock up! It would be nice if that same third pane would appear when clicking on a subtask…
Anyways, I feel the pain around taking meeting notes in the comments area or trying to have them in the conversations tab.
I’d recommend creating a task in the project for the notes, then in the description field, take notes around your topics of discussion. If the topics relate to a task in Asana, you can @mention the task so that you have all the relevant information.
Hope this helps!
+1 to Nicola’s comment. I usually take notes in a subtask called “[date] meeting notes” and often include the list of attendees in the title. Another helpful practice I have is keeping a private “Meetings” project. I create a task (using the same title format as above) for each meeting and take all my notes in the task description, and often add the meeting attendees as collaborators. All tasks live as a reference in my Meetings project so I can easily find them.
I agree with @Alexis. I like your suggested workaround, @Nicola! Doing it that way would keep you in Asana (not having to keep another app open). Thank you for that!
The downside to using this method (though I’ll use it in the until there’s something better 
) is that you cannot follow along with the other tasks while keeping your Notes task open.
I’ve updated my Project Notes mockup to include the ability to Save to PDF (something we cannot do with tasks). It also now shows tasks linked with @mentions.
